I received this about a month ago, but haven't posted anything about it yet as I needed some time to put it together, sand, paint and wire up the LED circuit. If anyone managed to make it to the London Shapeways meetup in Southbank, you may have seen a few pictures of this already as I brought some pics there on my tablet.

The model is probably the most complicated I've attempted to date, but I am extremely happy with the results. This time I'm keeping it! This is not a present for any friends, this time it's all mine!!!

It's printed completely in WSF in order to keep the cost down and I sanded a lot down by hand. I know Shapeways offers Polished WSF which I've used before and it's great, but I was convinced some of the parts wouldn't survive the polishing process.

I'll try not to go into loads of detail here, if you want to read how I did this in a little more detail, please check my blog here (http://psychobobarts.blogspot.co.uk - The name needs work, I know!). I'll post a video on the blog also in a few days once I had a chance to do some colour correction on what I've shot so far.

Edit: The video is now on my blog

I used acrylic paint in an airbrush to paint this (first time I used one ). It was definfitely a learning experience, but I don't think I could have achieved some of the subtle weathering look without one (you may not be able to see it in these pics. Once the video has been uploaded to youtube and I've linked to it in my blog, you should see some close ups where you can see this easier).

This is actually part 1 of this model, part 2 is where I make the base (that will probably be 3D printed also!).

(Baby Atlas! )

Here's a shot of the back of it

In keeping with all my other projects, Atlas of course comes with LEDs!

Thanks for the kind words! Knowing that other people find some of my projects cool actually drives me to do the next project, so I always appreciate it when someone says they like something I've done

@Mitchell: As for future projects, the first one to do is technically part 2 to this model; the base. I'm planning on printing a custom made base for this. This will be a mini project as it will have a few suprises itself. After that, I dont have any specific project in mind but I'm sure I'll find one

It's a little difficult to say how much exactly as it all depends on how you look at it, but no matter how you look at it, it's not exactly cheap.

I think I've spent about £120-£130 in total including miscellaneous bits for post printing work (filler, paint, sanding paper, electric components, varnish etc ...). As some of the extras are left over, one way you could look at it is that you haven't spent all this money on this one project as you have left overs .... unfortunatly the other way is you needed to buy this material to complete this project so it should all count

Of course, no costs mentioned include any labour or time costs as I did the work for myself for free